John Muir Laws is a naturalist, educator, and artist, with degrees in conservation and resource studies from the University of California, Berkeley; in wildlife biology from the University of Montana, Missoula; and in scientific illustration from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is a 2010 Audubon TogetherGreen Conservation Leadership Fellow and has received the Terwilliger Environmental Award for outstanding service in environmental education. Visit his website at johnmuirlaws.com.

Greg Sarris is currently serving his fourteenth term as Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. He holds the Graton Rancheria Endowed Chair in Writing and Native American Studies at Sonoma State University, and his publications include Keeping Slug Woman Alive: A Holistic Approach to American Indian Texts (1993), Grand Avenue (1994), and Watermelon Nights (1999). Greg lives and works in Sonoma County. Visit his website at greg-sarris.com.

J. K. Dineen is a metro reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle, where he writes about real estate development, the waterfront, housing, neighborhoods, and land-use planning. He has also been a staff reporter at the San Francisco Business Times, The San Francisco Examiner,the New York Daily News, and a bunch of papers in his native Massachusetts. He lives in San Francisco with his family.

Daniel J. Kevles is the Stanley Woodward professor emeritus of history, history of medicine, and American studies at Yale University. His research and writings encompass the interplay of science, technology, and society past and present, with a focus on the United States. Kevles is the author/editor of seven books, notably In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity. He is currently completing Vital Properties: A History of Innovation and Ownership in the Stuff of Life, to be published by Alfred A. Knopf. Kevles has also written dozens of articles and essays for publications including The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, Scientific American, Smithsonian Magazine, and the Times Literary Supplement.

Lewis Watts is a photographer, archivist, and professor emeritus of art at UC Santa Cruz with a longstanding interest in the cultural landscape of the African diaspora in the Bay Area and internationally.

Elizabeth Pepin Silva is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, photographer, writer, and former day manager of the historic Fillmore Auditorium. She holds a degree in journalism from San Francisco State University.

Tony Platt is the author of ten books and more than 150 essays and articles on race, inequality, and social justice in American history, among them Bloodlines: Recovering Hitler’s Nuremberg Laws, From Patton’s Trophy to Public Memorial, and The Child Savers: The Invention of Delinquency, which was reissued as a fortieth-anniversary edition in 2009. Platt, now a professor emeritus, taught at the University of Chicago, the University of California, Berkeley, and California State University, Sacramento, where he received awards for teaching and scholarship. He has been a visiting professor at Chuo University, Tokyo, and at Queen’s University, Belfast, and was a visiting researcher at the Huntington Library and the National Museum of American History. Platt has written for the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Truthdig.com, the History News Network, Z Magazine, Monthly Review, and the Guardian, and his commentaries have aired on NPR. His publications have been translated into four languages. Tony Platt lives in Berkeley and Big Lagoon, California.

A Sierra Nevada native and current resident, Gary Noy taught history at Sierra College from 1987 until 2012. He founded the Sierra College Center for Sierra Nevada Studies and served as its director until his retirement. His previous titles include Sierra Stories: Tales of Dreamers, Schemers, Bigots, and Rogues (Heyday, 2014), which won the Gold Medal for Best Regional Nonfiction from the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, The Illuminated Landscape: A Sierra Nevada Anthology (Heyday, 2010), which he coedited, and Distant Horizon: Documents from the 19th Century American West (University of Nebraska Press, 1999). Visit his website at garynoy.com.

Alan Rosenus, a historian and writer, has reintroduced a number of California classics, including The Indian History of the Modoc War, Joaquin Miller’s Life Amongst the Modocs, and Selected Writings of Joaquin Miller. A grantee of the National Endowment for the Arts, Rosenus has taught at Coe College, the College of Marin, and San Francisco State University.

Rebecca LaVally, PhD, teaches rhetorical criticism and persuasion at California State University, Sacramento. She is a former editor of the California Senate’s public-policy research office and former Sacramento bureau chief for United Press International and Gannett News Service.

Jeff Raimundo recently completed twenty-five years as a political and public relations consultant based in Sacramento. Previously, he enjoyed a twenty-year career as a newspaper reporter and editor with The Sacramento Bee and McClatchy Company newspapers in Sacramento and Washington, DC.

Steve Swatt is a veteran political analyst and public affairs executive. He is a former award-winning political reporter with twenty-five years of journalism experience with The San Francisco Examiner, United Press International in Los Angeles, and KCRA-TV (NBC) in Sacramento. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley.